Consulting Services
The EDquity Leader Fellowship
A selective, year-long program that develops the leader who manages your special education programming into a Certified IEP Quality Improvement Leader, powered by monthly blind evaluations of your school's own IEPs.
All sessions are virtual. The June Impact Expo will be in person, location to be determined.
Applications
Open January 2027
Founding cohort
July 2027 to May 2028
Investment
$8,000 per seat
Eligible funding
Title II-A and IDEA Part B
The Problem
A signed IEP is not a compliant IEP.
Teachers write IEPs and administrators sign them, yet no one inside the building has the time, training, or independent perspective to know whether those documents are legally defensible or written to move students forward. Gaps stay invisible until a state complaint, a due process filing, or a monitoring review makes them visible, and by then students have lost time they will not recover.
Traditional professional development does not fix this, because one-off workshops carry no ongoing accountability and produce no objective data. The fellowship replaces guesswork with a year of independent measurement of your own documents.
How It Works
The monthly diagnostic loop
Every month from September 2027 through May 2028, your school submits five redacted IEPs and EDquity blind-evaluates them against our proprietary 38-condition master rubric. That is 45 independent evaluations across the year, a diagnostic service valued at $29,385 on our standard rate card, donated in full to fellowship schools.
STEP 1
Blind submission
By the fifth business day of each month, your school submits 5 redacted IEPs following our secure, FERPA-protected Redaction Guidance.
STEP 2
Objective evaluation
EDquity blind-evaluates the documents against the 38-condition master rubric to surface systemic, school-wide trends.
STEP 3
Monthly strategy seminar
After the reports go out, the cohort meets virtually to work the trends and data together as leaders, turning each month's findings into strategy for their buildings.
Fall: Training and Diagnosis
Your fellow learns the federal law behind every condition, anchored in Endrew F. v. Douglas County (2017), and trains hands-on with the EDquity Leader Rubric. By December, four months of blind trend data show exactly which conditions your school's documents consistently miss, and the December Data Summit converts that trend into a targeted professional development plan, presented to you the same day.
Spring: The Impact Project
From January, your fellow leads a structured impact project, action research adapted for school leaders. The fall data and the research literature define the problem, your fellow intervenes each month with staff training, pre-signature rubric checks, and team coaching, documenting evidence of every intervention, and the continuing blind evaluation measures whether the data moves. Because every score all year is EDquity's independent blind score, the outcome is objective by construction.
The year at a glance
Four anchors carry the year, with a monthly virtual strategy seminar after each round of reports and individual coaching throughout. Selected fellows receive the full session calendar at onboarding.
What your school receives
45 of your own IEPs blind-evaluated across the year with full reports, a donated service valued at $29,385
A leader trained on federal special education law and the EDquity Leader Rubric
A data-driven professional development plan in December, built from your school's own trend data
Measured, independently scored quality improvement by June
A credentialed Certified IEP Quality Improvement Leader on staff
The investment is $8,000 per seat, typically funded through PD budgets, Title II-A, or IDEA Part B professional development allocations, so it never needs to touch local operating funds. Confirm allowability with your special education finance coordinator or state education agency.
Who should apply
The fellowship is for the people who manage and sign off on IEPs: special education coordinators and directors, department chairs, case management leads, and instructional coaches with SPED oversight, at private schools, charter schools, and small to mid-size local education agencies.
Selection criteria, applied uniformly:
- Current responsibility for school-wide IEP oversight
- At least two years of special education experience
- A written statement on why IEP quality matters for your students
- A signed School Leader Commitment Letter (download above, upload nothing here; email the signed copy to info@edquityatthemargins.org)
- Priority for Title I schools, high-poverty charters, and settings serving multilingual families and students of color with disabilities
The fellowship runs one year per school and is non-renewable, and seats in the founding cohort are limited. The seat fee is non-refundable, and the Certified IEP Quality Improvement Leader credential is conferred only when the fellow completes the full program, including the final impact project. Schools that want continued independent evaluation afterward engage our standard audit service.
Register interest in the founding cohort
Applications open in January 2027 and close March 31, 2027, timed so schools can commit from their 2027-28 budgets. Cohort announcements follow in April. Register your interest below and we will contact you when applications open.